Colonel no one will not take off: how to watch the series "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

One of the best series of the year, haunting, horrifying, seductive, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in doing so proves that Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel has failed to transfer to the screen. The huge, spectacular, high-budget Netflix project is a must-see, but not as much as the novel is a must-read, and the connection between the two is like that between an older Jose Buendia and his graying descendants. The first eight hours of the epic have been released online; a sequel follows at an unknown date, but in the meantime Izvestia has assessed the available portion of the release.

Contrary to Marquez

It is not clear why Gabriel Garcia Marquez all his life was against the film adaptation of the novel, although he could not but understand that the heirs will not resist the promises of the big cinematic bourgeoisie. And so it happened: the sons of Marquez a few years ago sold the rights, on the condition that the series will be filmed in Colombia and in Spanish.

It was released on Netflix in Spanish, although streaming gave the option to choose an English soundtrack, i.e. dubbing. But that's not the point. It's just that when the novel came out, there were directors who could bring the novel to the screen in a way that didn't look like a film adaptation or adaptation, but a work of fiction in its own right.

A still from "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

Photo: Dynamo

For example, this could be done by Alejandro Chodorowski, who, of course, would have completely rewritten the story for himself, but all the perversion, all the domestic magic, all the supernaturalcruelty of the work would have been reflected in his version. Perhaps Pasolini and Fellini could have done this. Of modern directors, perhaps the Mexican Carlos Reygadas or the Portuguese Miguel Gomes could have done it.

Who would let them, though? Netflix spent a huge amount of money on this project. The entire budget is not disclosed, but it was announced that the streaming service "invested" $52 million in the Colombian economy alone, something the country has never seen before. Because the hands of hired Colombian workers were built the entire town of Macondo area of 540 thousand square meters, the team of the series consisted of almost a thousand people - yes, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" can be rightfully considered a serial blockbuster.

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So, risk and take a showrunner showrunner star author's movie no one would not. Instead, they chose directors Alex Garcia Lopez, who worked on "The Witcher" and "Cowboy Bebop", and Laura Mora Ortega, who many years ago shot a series about PabloEscobar and was one of the directors of "The Green Border". And they very diligently fulfilled the responsible task of Netflix, the heirs of the writer certainly sin to complain: everything is staged exactly according to the book, even with a voice-over, periodically reading aloud the most famous fragments.

A still from "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

Photo: Dynamo

On the other hand, what does "exactly according to the book" mean? The book describes how cousins José and Ursula became lovers, and because they were fed up with the ghost of José's murdered rival, they left their home village and founded their own Eden, Macondo. Where they bred and multiplied without knowing death, until the sinful world brought death from outside.

The plot of the novel is built on parallels with the Bible, where Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who came out to be shot, is Christ, and the Buendia family itself is likened to Abraham. The whole book, with these endless children and grandchildren, who are often even named the same, is structured as a dream or a trip, where the very notion of reality is conditional. The reader is immersed in a special state, when only the imagination works, and the intellect passes before the vitality of the Colombia invented by Marquez.

What turned out to be the series "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

The creators of the series faced the eternal curse of cinema: visuality, illustrativeness, which so easily destroys the fruits of imagination and transforms, transforms fantasies into crude embodiments. In the book we almost physically feel how the personalities of the founders of the family - Jose and Ursula - seem to be reborn, split, reflected in their descendants, as in a crooked mirror. But are still their incarnations, infected with all the diseases of the world.

A still from "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

Photo: Dynamo

Macondo is tainted by the church, by politicians, by magicians, by civil war, and all of this puts an imprint on the agonizing spirit of the Buendia family, until, as we remember from the book, Macondo is destroyed by a hurricane, because there is nothing left of the paradisiacal place worth preserving.

There are attempts in the series to convey the magism of the novel. Mostly due to the flying camera, when intraframe montage unites events separated in time and space. Added a lot of computer effects - like a stream of blood that flows from the room of a suicide across the street directly to the feet of his mother. But the authors do not play with light and optical filters, which would have more accurately conveyed what is happening in the novel, and did not force one artist to play several characters at once, which in the case of Marquez's novel would have been a logical step, although perhaps too predictable.

Sex scenes here are given conventionally and chastely, not unlike the novel, and we will not see any naturalistic violence in the frame either. In short, there are no revelations here, and we should hardly expect them from the second half of the series, whenever it comes out.

A still from "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

Photo: Dynamo

And yet this is "One Hundred Years of Solitude", not a comic book based on it. Don't bother studying the cast's filmography, they're mostly unsung names, but look how organic they are in their roles. Maybe we imagined Macondo differently, but the creators of the series definitely managed to create this city, we can walk around it, live there together with the characters, try to wipe off the blood from the walls, which in each episode is pouring more and more. The last eight episodes are a civil war with all the consequences: infighting, fratricide, inconsolable mothers and their children dying with their heads held high.

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There may be less sweat and dirt than there should be, but when the street is strewn with the corpses of innocent people who had the misfortune to be born and live here, it works. In some moments, Márquez's world comes down on us with all its force, colliding also with our own reality, our fears and tragedies.

It is not for nothing that "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is a board book in our country: we feel and understand every page of it, every movement of the soul of the Buendia family, this story is not only about Colombia, it is in each of us. And who hasn't imagined himself Colonel Aureliano, whose mind is rushing with terrible speed even those memories that could not be in his head, but which are full of Macondo?

A still from "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

Photo: Dynamo

And even the amazing symbol, the ice he touched as a child, is like a bridge to us, to Russia, where Márquez is read more passionately - and biased - than anywhere else on the planet. We will watch this series here strictly and will hardly like it. But they will definitely pick up the book again in order to understand whether it is worth preparing for the hurricane or whether something can still be fixed.